For a brief time (1975-76) Venezuela's people experienced nationalization of their petroleum resources. Recently Hugo Chavez restored nationalization of petroleum to benefit the people, workers and ecosystem. Prior to Chavez's nationalization, petroleum profits from Venezuela did not stay around long enough to benefit the Venezuelan people, as foreign multinational corporations siphoned the profits into coffers of CEOs (ie., Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, etc..)

Since nationalization Chavez has utlized the extra profits to help the struggling poor people in Venezuela. In addition certain pollution control measures are now affordable, since profits are no longer flying out of Venezuela to billionaire CEO's bank accounts in the US..

"Q: You have spent millions of dollars of your nation’s oil wealth throughout Latin America. Are you really helping these other nations or are you simply buying political support for your regime?

Chávez: We are brothers and sisters. That’s one of the reasons for the wrath of the empire. You know that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. And the biggest gas reserves in this hemisphere, the eighth in the world. Up until seven years ago, Venezuela was a U.S. oil colony. All of our oil was going up to the north, and the gas was being used by the U.S. and not by us. Now we are diversifying. Our oil is helping the poor. We are selling to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, some Central American countries, Uruguay, Argentina.

Q: And the Bronx?

Chávez: In the Bronx it is a donation. In all the cases I just mentioned before, it is trade. However, it’s not free trade, just fair commerce. We also have an international humanitarian fund as a result of oil revenues."

read on @;

http://alternatives-international.net/article333.html

Since nationalization oil profits remain in Venezuela, this also gives Chavez the chance to improve upon environmental pollution controls, an inexpensive alternative that US petroleum corporations are unwilling to implement here at home..

Nationalization of US petroleum supplies could also solve the problems of residents living near oil refineries suffering disproportionate rates of cancer, leukemia, asthma, etc.. by treating residents and workers with respect, currently unheard of under cutthroat capitalism that places CEO profits above people's health..

"Despite Mobil's record, the TNRCC issued a permit allowing the facility to increase emissions in 1999--over the objections of neighboring residents and without allowing the public to challenge the expansion in a hearing. The TNRCC's failure to regulate the facility is compounded by a disturbing fact: 95% of the people living next to the Mobil complex are African American, with almost 54% of them living in poverty. Rev. Malveaux says that the Beaumont minority community is similar to others in Texas such as in Corpus Christi; "it's the poor, the minority, the disenfranchised, the children, the elderly; [and] they have no idea how to overcome their situation." He said that repeated fires, spills and explosions in the industrial plants forced the residents to begin scrutinizing their corporate neighbors. "In Port Arthur, we found a large amount of MTBE in the air, there was a school near, three churches near there, a housing project right there." In the early 1990's, these discoveries and others led Rev. Malveaux to found PACE, People Against Contaminated Environments, to protect the people from the industrial pollution from the refinery complex."

read on about petroleum's cancer alley @;

http://www.txpeer.org/toxictour/beaumont.html

Another alternative to socialism is anarcho-syndicalism, the iww is looking for help in organizing oil refinery workers..

organize union @;

http://www/iww.org/unions/dept200/iu230

read about Exxon's crimes against humanity @;

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/

BUSH : "NATIONALIZE YOUR COUNTRY'S OIL, GET BOMBED INTO THE STONE AGE !!!!!!! THAT'S THE LAW !!!!!!!!!"